Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 369. The CO2 Mindset Shift: How To Get Past The Fears

Transcript

Episode 369. The CO2 Mindset Shift: How To Get Past The Fears · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker: What's up everyone? Welcome to the Refrigeration Mentor podcast. Super happy you're here. I wanna dive into something I talk about often, and it's CO2 and really the CO2 mindset, like that shift every technician has to make. If you're making the move in the supermarket world, or if you're working on HFC systems now and you have some CO2 systems, this is something that you really.
• 0:01
  So I've talked to many, many technicians who say like, they have people that will not at their company, that will not work on it. They say it's, it's too much. The electronics, the, the controls, the, there's just. More valves higher pressures, and, and there and all that stuff is there. I'm not gonna lie. The biggest thing is, is that the things that you understand, you can troubleshoot.
• 0:02
  It's all facts. And it took me a long, long, too long to learn that in myself. Nobody told me it's about the facts. And I, I did a lot of guesswork. I think it might be this. Okay. I think it might be that this is kind of what it looks like. Okay, let's just print it. Oh, it worked. But sometimes it changes part and it didn't work.
• 0:03
  Incident, and this is why training is so important, and this is why I do a lot of this, a lot of this training, teaching people how to be safe with working on CO2. This stuff still can happen with other refrigerants. It still can happen if you over pressurize a system. That's why like tanks, there's a rule on it.
• 0:04
  The big thing is, is that learning a little bit all the time is going to help you if you turn a blind eye. You're going to get caught off guard because this is not, CO2 is not slowing down in the refrigeration game. It's not, it's just gonna, it, you know, it, it might not be the final refrigerant, but it's one that, that works really great right now.
• 0:05
  Does it, does it take more work to make CO2 work? For sure. And like people talk about trans critical, it goes into transcript. So unefficient, it's no different than an HFC system when you start to put HFC systems in a hundred and. 20 degree on 120 degree roof fahrenheit or a 45 degree Celsius roof. You go and jam the HFC systems up with that high pressure.
• 0:06
  Different tools like you're going to, you don't recover CO2, you don't have to at this point. This is something that you can, it's in the atmosphere so you can release it. Okay? You want to minimize the release 'cause you don't want any oil to go out because that's the bad part of like CO2 when you're releasing a lot of it, you can get oil droplets and this, and that's bad for the environment.
• 0:07
  That's lower than the manufacturers would like to see those compressors, especially on the low temp, you know, and every manufacturer, they say they have their own thing. Some say it's on the low temp, it's 20 K, 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Some say they can do it at. 10 K, 18 degrees Fahrenheit. But once again, like I would shot side to the, to the caution and have higher supreet.
• 0:08
  Now, all these things we really wanna understand and when does it inject? Why does it inject? This is why when I'm doing trainings and talking about. CO2, we go into the controllers and we take a look at that and try to understand what we're looking at and why, why we are setting these set points to, okay, 25 degrees Fahrenheit, or 36 degrees Fahrenheit, or you know, 20 degrees, 20 K or 15 K.
• 0:09
  And that's not the case with CO2. And the big things is, is that. If you experienced HFC Tech, so if you're working on 4 4 8 4 4 9 4 0 4 22 ra HFC racks, you're going to be okay with CO2. But there's those things that you need to learn. You're going to need to learn how to use controls better work with controls, and you're going to need to understand electrical.
• 0:10
  The system, no question ask. They'll go out in there and fix a problem, but not always very efficient. They don't always understand why they fixed it. So I always, always recommend, like, if you haven't taken a supermarket course before and you know you are, you learned on your own, it's the first step is taking like the the supermarket academy or a supermarket.
• 0:11
  The why, the how, and when the hot gas works the way it works. Cool gas doesn't matter why have a, a surge tank or a, like a critically charged system versus a, a non one glycol systems. You know, and you're not gonna be an expert overnight that, you know in this industry. But understanding the fundamentals will learn and help you be very successful in CO2.
• 0:12
  What's the wire you pull there? It doesn't have to be shielded or not. These things is you don't need someone there beside you to, to show you this. You need someone to coach you on how to do it, so you do it right and get the meter out there. It's all about logic. When you're going, when you're going through all this and it.
• 0:13
  I went there. I needed to add gas 'cause there was no gas and no CO2 or not enough. Which I bet you sometimes that wasn't the problem, but it's okay. We need to add it. Don't know how to do it. You know? And I've seen videos where people actually got hurt. When they got dry ice in the hose, 'cause they didn't know.
• 0:14
  Well, you get thrown out on these difficult jobs once in a while. I work on the conduct controller once a month. You cannot learn an E two a Microthermal Danfoss controller if you only log onto it once a month for half an hour. And you don't do any reading the books, you don't do any study. You can do all of that too, but if you're not playing on the controller and seeing what's actually happened, you need that, that hands-on experience, that's what we really push in, in, in our courses is to make sure you go do those hands-on, go do those drawings.
• 0:15
  Install because it, there's, at least for now, the practices are like they want to do it right. Going back to the basics, pulling those proper, doing the proper pressure tests, doing the proper setup and commissioning, taking the time for that, what I have been noticing and hearing about that there's a lot more jobs and there's less people with the training and less people with the experience, then now people are running into issues.
• 0:16
  It's just more, you gotta make sure the programs in the case controllers are in the high pressure valve controller or the gas cooler controller, and. This is all learnable and this is the big thing is that we do need to know more. For sure if you're a CO2 tech, you should be paid more than a technician that works on just standard HFC racks.
• 0:17
  Okay? Now, if it's just a burnt out fan mode and you see it's blatantly dead fine, but there's a lot of times when it's not that and it's, it's okay, a case is running warm or a walk in boxes of running warm. And it's not always about that. It's you lost charge. It could be about, maybe it's the, a frozen up coil in the back and you, you can't see it on those ones.
• 0:18
  It doesn't really matter. Like I can just get a job anyway. That's the wrong mindset. Don't try not to think like that. The mindset you should have is like, I want to crush it every day and I want to be better. I'm gonna learn to stuff. I'm gonna spend a half an hour a day, 20 minutes a day watching some videos, listen to some podcasts, reading some manuals, and that's how the best technicians get better and quicker and faster.
• 0:19
  And that's what's coming in our industry, and I, I'm excited about it. I'm excited. We want to do some stuff differently. This makes us better. This makes us stronger. And I'm excited about it. So hopefully it took a few things away. I know it's, it is definitely kind of a rant on the mindset of, of getting into CO2, but the big things is, is that, you know, it's not that complicated.
• 0:20
  It could be a chiller, it could be cascade, it could be a glycol system. It could be. Chiller. I never said that one, but you'll crush it because it goes back to the fundamentals. Understand the system will help you understand and solve the problem. Come back to the logic part. Think a little bit, look a little bit, listen a little bit, feel a little bit this here.
• 0:21
  Love the, if you have any questions, you know, always you can reach out in the refrigeration mentor community. You can put it here in Spotify or Apple. This is exciting. It's an exciting time to be in refrigeration. There's lots of changes that come up. Changes are hard, but you know what? I'm here and we're here at the refrigeration miter team and the community to help support you, to share some knowledge and really get you to that next level.